From a personal career perspective, the solution architect role can accelerate exposure to many different types of technology and allow you to upskill rapidly.
Immersing yourself in specific projects is a fantastic way to learn a technology. Sometimes, taking a short-term contract role for a particular project exposure can pay off, leading to multiple years of experience in a fantastic role.
Purely technical roles may not involve any capacity to influence decisions about how a problem is solved. There are always potential issues and trade-offs with designs that you may never be able to influence as an engineer. Break/fix activities may never have the impact you could have within the architecture arena.
Additionally, architects deal with the bigger picture of how things integrate; you will build a deeper appreciation of outside specific silos of technology. This is important, as technology sectors are no longer siloed, especially within the cloud.
Technical architects, especially professionals with years of hands-on experience, may miss the keyboard and the safety of the screen. However, the value of multi-disciplined understanding also has a knock-on effect on troubleshooting potentially mission-critical incidents.
- Solve problems at a larger scale
- Opportunity to develop understanding of multiple technologies – feed technical passion
- Always learning
- Soft skills
- Business Skills
While the architect’s role sounds positive, some aspects must be considered, and each project will vary. Some will be successful and exciting and accept your informed opinion. Sometimes, an architect may have to work with something that doesn’t quite fit but is constrained to do in an inelegant manner or for pure commercial relationship reasons.
It is very possible to travel the journey to a solution architect and remain ‘hands-on’ whilst gaining the necessary exposure to newer technologies from a design perspective.
Successful solution architects can get to the stage whereby they can reskill themselves, and develop their own skills sets for potentially other areas of IT (i.e. Developer, Security, AI, Big data). All this comes from the exposure of processing business problems and solving them with technology.
It is challenging to balance technical, hands on & architecture skills, the IT world is everchanging, but it is a very rewarding career pathway to be a modern technologist.
A Getting Started Core Skills Checklist For A Solution Architect
While the commercial focus of a cloud solution architect can vary, some underlying skills are a blend of business, project, and technology needed for all design roles. These skills help assist communication between other professionals. Knowing enough for a detailed, productive conversation is a starting point for success.
| Topic | Thoughts | Reviewed Y/N |
| Understanding of a business relationship with technology | Is it necessary? Required for project or compliance/sustainability? Business opportunity – useful for agility, driver for change· Justified/validated lead to win business· Innovation, develop new offeringsProvider of technology | |
| Develop a strong base of a mixture of technology/experience used in the enterprise & service provider space. | Develop a technical understanding to be able to have conversations with business and technical specialists about needs and design decisions; Cloud Models Private, Hybrid, Public, Edge Service Approaches & benefits/trade-offs SaaS IaaS PaaS Compute Operating system basics – windows and Linux Virtualisation / Containers & Kubernetes orchestration concepts Right-sizing Images Bash & CLI usage Boot scripts concepts Networking IP Addressing / CIDR Ranges/ 802.1q VLAN & sizing / private / publicIP· Layer 2 Switching – MAC/ARP/STP· Local routing / static / next hop / interfaces NAT UDP / TCP· Unicast / Multicast / Broadcast· DHCP concepts· Dynamic Routing (BGP)· Benefits of load balancing· Remote access – VPN (site to site / Client to site) SDN – Encapsulation / Logical network concepts· Storage Block – iSCSI,· File – NFS / CIFS / Windows· HDD / SSD· I OPS / Throughput RAID Levels – 1, 5, 6, 10 Snapshots vs Backups Databases Primer on SQL & NOSQL· Creating basic queries DNS Concepts & Importance Common Records – NS / CNAME / A / MX / SPF· Web Hosting Basics Web Farm / Web Garden· Common Web status codes – 200, 400, 404, 501, 502· Encryption Overview of Developer Processes SDLC Source Control usage DevOps Overview Deployment Types & Methods Interacting with APIs Overview of IaaC GIT | |
| Start to form Project / Technology Specific Thoughts for Short Term Planning | Vendor Certifications blueprint review based on technology aspirations Create a personal development plan/dates to study Implementation hands-on skills – Build your own lab, edge & cloud-based / hybrid | |
| Build up a Consultancy Skill mindset to work with others | Technical Presentation practice & demo recording Soft skills – technical discussions/questions/Requirement gathering | |
| Develop Documentation Skills to illustrate business value | Diagrams business logical and technology-based Architecture design documentation |